1987 12 19 New Order NME Feature

POWER, STRUCTURE AND BEAUTY

With their biggest ever hit single and a definitively brill compilation to their name, 1987 was a good year in NEW ORDER's long-running campaign for world domination of the grooviest kind. Their new single hints at divine patronage as the reason for their ever-growing success. Truly faithful JAMES BROWN sees no reason to doubt their word. Order forms by KEVIN CUMMINS.

A study of the properties and kinetic energy of faith, beauty and power in the Western World as
experienced through the songs of New Order.

Dusseldorf, December, 1987.
Peter Hook, bearded bass player with New Order, leans back into DM240 worth of comfortable German armchair and says:

"We’re the only respected band in music, mate. You must know that. We're the only truly independent band, we're the only ones that do things because we want to do them. There isn't anyone who's
comparable to us. You must know that."

He is correct. His case is concrete, his band faultless. Before you go any further you must know that to indulge yourselves in the pub grubbiness of most contemporary rock music whilst New Order are here for the taking is to masturbate cockroaches when you could be riding the backs of tiger kings.

This month New Order have released their thirteenth original single on Factory Records. ‘Touched By The Hand of God' comes too late to figure in the vinyl avalanche towards the Yuletide number one spot but is too stunningly emotive and addictive to be buried beneath the traditional creative stodge of the New Year. The band are undertaking three dates to promote it.

Tonight they play Dusseldorf, followed by a night in Paris, and, two days after that, a date at Wembley Arena, London.

It is the culmination of a year in which they have had their first ever Top Five hit with 'True Faith', have toured Australia, Italy, Japan, and filled 17,000 seater stadiums in the USA; have answered rumour of a split with the terse statement "Up yer bum!", and then returned to America to refill yet more stadiums on a co-headlining tour with Echo And The Bunnymen. They have also achieved chart success with the release of the 1980-to-‘87 singles compilation ‘Substance'. Of which more later.

As 1987 closes so well for them (and with ”Touched By The Hand Of God‘ one of the few ecclesiastical references likely to bring anybody any joy over the holiday period), now is the perfect time to look at the sanitized musical beauty of New Order and the singular position in which their success has placed them.

Peter Hook's character is as strong and sharp as his Viking features. He is 31 years old, creates the most fearful booming bass sound, and wears motorbike trousers and boots to match the attractively expensive lightweight leather coat, the sort mounted police use for winter motorcades, which he sports on his back.

His interview manner can veer from being stern and absolute to a more informative and impressive vein. He considers your questions and acknowledges your points about New Order but always replies in a way that lets you know he is the authority on the band. And it's an authority no one but the other band members can challenge.

“The funny thing I've found with rock bass players is that they play themselves down," he tells me. "They take a back seat. Now I'm not going to take a backseat. I’m not content to do that. If you take a band where everyone is doing something good, then they're usually great, but if you have a band and some of the members take a back seat, then they're just not going to be good. The Smiths are a good example, the drummer and the bass player take a back seat to Marr and Morrissey. And I still don't think Marr is as great as people make him out to be because I've listened to Smiths instrumentals and they're really boring. Marr is a great compliment to Morrissey's vocals but on his own it doesn't sound up, it sounds dull. Together they were a great team, though."

Some people would suggest that Gillian and Stephen take a back seat in New Order because of both your own and Barney’s more noticeable stage presence.

"In Joy Division, Stephen's drums played a really big role. If you listen to a lot of the early Joy Division stuff the drums were really powerful riffs. Really powerful. ’She’s Lost Control’, ‘Atrocity Exhibition', Lost Souls‘, ‘Atmosphere' .... the list goes one and on, Gillian has made us more spread instead of being focussed, but a lot of the synths are Bernard’s babies. So, musically it’s a balance."

Peter Hook has a love for Joy Division that will always overshadow his feelings for New Order. He doesn't talk about the times before Ian Curtis’s death in an abstract or dreamy sort of way. Those times are recorded in his mind as clearly as the songs are recorded on the LPs. ’Closer’ is his all time favourite LP; Lou Reed’s ‘Berlin' comes a close second.

Hook isn't bitter or jaded about his past, but it is the finality of Joy Division that he believes still magnetises a solid core of New Order fans. The more rabid ones, he points out, are ones still obsessed with Joy Division but it doesn‘t disturb him that they don't have the same obsessiveness about New Order. "It's understandable. What New Order do is far stronger than Joy Division but if you're talking about importance to people, then they put more importance on Joy Division, which is finished, than on New Order, which is happening now."

He goes on to describe the strangeness of receiving a fan letter from a girl who wanted to know who Joy Division were and why they were always mentioned in the same breath as New Order. Likewise, the popularity that the ‘Brotherhood’ LP bought them in America has left many new fans confused when they play their earlier songs, from ‘Ceremony’ right up to ‘Lowlife’.

“A lot of Americans thought New Order started with ‘Brotherhood’ and ‘Bizarre Love Triangle‘. They'd heard ‘Blue Monday‘ but not known it was Joy Division . . .errm ... New Order. . . Freudian slip.

“I can listen to Joy Division but not New Order,” he continues. “Joy Division is over so I can listen for musical enjoyment whereas when you listen to New Order you're listening to something you play, so you‘re always looking for something to pick up on. It's not subconscious but it’s not concious, it’s about midway. The few New Order songs that I can listen to are ones we don't play, like 'Truth‘, ‘Leave Me Alone’ and ’Doubts Even Here’."

Hook‘s passionate memory of Joy Division is one which jars with the one Stephen Morris, while admitting complete overstatement, offers me later: “We were four guys who used to get pissed a lot, then we were three guys who used to get pissed at lot. And then all of a sudden you find out that this guy who used to get pissed a lot is some sort of intellectual genius."

Between themselves New Order have a strong and sardonic sense of humour.

When asked by manager Rob Gretton, a huge lager-slugging polar bear of a man, why the band were still waiting in the dressing room whilst the roadcrew were travelling back to the hotel in the luxury of the first mini-bus run, Hook captured the tedium that is the 90 per cent of touring the public don't see, by replying;

"We are sitting in this dump because we are too f--- --ing bored, stupid and lazy to move."

Gretton himself is something of a legend. One story goes that at an important American record company party for the band, a Rolling Stone photographer and New Order's US press officer were having trouble getting the band onto the roof for a front cover photosession. In the increasing panic the press officer found Gretton sat in the middle of the throbbing party in a large armchair chainsmoking joints.

When told about the situation all he did in response was consistently tell the Rolling Stone photographer to ‘F--- Off' until the poor guy gave up trying. Thus New Order never did appear on the cover of Rolling Stone. Laid back is the word that springs to mind when thinking of Gretton.

Likewise, Hook shows his lack of concern for the long-dismissed accusations of flirtation with fascism when he says ‘The Germans should like us, being New Order...."

When I tell him how surprised I am by the dryness of their humour, and how I intend to communicate this here he says: “In a way when you try and break a myth in the perfect way then you're not goint to achieve or gain anything."

It‘s as if the many myths that surround New Order are protection from an inquisitive world, and in a world where the hungry media can invade people‘s privacy so sinisterly, it’s a protection that's needed.

New Order have already suffered the sort of intrusion that puts a person off journalists for life. Bernard Sumner, Barney, the band‘s vocalist, like Freddie Mercury, will now only talk to one journalist per country a year.

He treats my arrival with disdain but after a while allows me to listen to his version of the night's main event, as he recalls it to his press officer.

“I was stood there, half sitting on the chest of drawers and half standing, just like you are, talking. After a while I thought ’This radiator’s bloody hot’ but l didn’t really think that much of it. A minute later my whole back goes up in flames, I had been sitting against two lighted candles! There I was struggling and trying to get my shirt off and these bastards were just laughing, then one of them starts pouring vodka on me! Look at the hole; it cost me £40 that shirt, it's ruined."

Barney recounts this story in a vivid and entertaining manner. He enjoys your attention and responds to it by being visual as well as verbal. He has always refused to discuss his lyrics, merely casting them aside as the final things they throw on top of the music, but the wealth of emotion that is drawn upon to write even his most casual lines naturally prompts inquisitiveness.

As Peter Hook says, ’no one in New Order takes a back seat' and so it comes as a shock to watch Barney go off to bed as you’re busy interviewing the other three.

Barney’s vocals are what have made New Order so complete since ‘Lowlife'. The release of the singles compilation, ‘Substance’, has illuminated New Order's musical development, which has progressed around Barney's search for his own voice.

Up to ‘Temptation' he was tentatively probing the idea of singing, too often sounding like Curtis. With ‘Blue Monday' New Order exploded, Barney discovered his own style, and in the time it took for that record to become the world’s best selling 12" ever, they had passed into another more  confident and open minded phase. On 'Confusion’ they worked, for the first time, with Arthur Baker who pointed them more in the direction of commercial but stimulating dance music. With the release of 'Shellshock' and then Lowlife' their ability to create expansive and often awesome dance music was unleashed in all its glory.

New Order had become the only British rock band to play exhilarating club/dance music live with bass guitar parts that sound like HM solos, and synthesisers pumping out melodies with all the sophistication of classical music.

Since then, the release of last year's 'Brotherhood' and the excellent ’Bizarre Love Triangle', and then this year’s Top Five hit, ('True Faith' cowritten with Stephen Hague) New Order have become their most adventrous to date.

They have created a sanitised musical beauty. The gap between their dance awareness and the competition’s club footedness is as wide as the distance between Japanese and British technology. The magnitude of their craftwork often projects them out of the arena of common musical reference and debate. They have the power of the Bauhaus school of art and the beauty of nature. Their songs are like the travel of a splash, the drops exploding upwards in slow-motion, through the thin crisp air and back down to the rippling surface.

They feel physical. Two or three times 'Brotherhood' and 'Lowlife' have literally put me into a state of suspended animation, the layers of synthesisers rolling like electric waves through my body. They make mood music - bad mood music, but, unlike alcohol, television and The Smiths, New Order are a stimulant, not a depressant. They drag you out of depression. The nicest thing anyone has ever said to me is that 'Bizarre Love Triangle' reminds them of me. To inspire such an affinity to a song, New Order must surely be geniuses.

Their work is proof enough of that. The music is power-packed yet beneath the banks of sound are stimulating catches like the soft solitary death knell at the close of 'Sunrise' on 'Lowlife'. Likewise the humour behind the recording of the needle jumping out of the groove and off 'Brotherhood' becomes quickly overshadowed by the finality of the noise.

There is a consistent energy that runs through the jerkiness of Barney's passionate stage movements and the boldness of Hook's bass-slung-low stage dance, through into the cool power of Peter Saville's stunning minimalist record sleeves.

Barney's cuteness, Gillian and Stephen's appearance, and the sheer bi-sexuality of their music have destroyed the stale macho stage behaviour that's traditional in rock.

Their songs hold attraction that demands a double-take, a mental re-focus before you can even begin to take in the enormity of the ability. There are so many unlikely parts fitted together in New Order songs. Hook's bass booms with all the depth of a cello as Gillian's orchestration of synthetic violins, kettle drums, and Latin acoustic guitar is run over by Stephen's hi-NRG beat and percussion.

New Order's songs maintain all the qualities of power, structure and beauty. These shine even more so because they have been achieved in the foreign sterile world of disco music when New Order could have so easily chosen to make atmospheric noise. This progression has been particularly helped by the open minded way they have chosen to work with a variety of producers...

Though he would rather remain as pure as The Fall, Peter Hook is proud of the fact that New Order are prepared to try anything to push themselves forward. From Martin Hannett he learnt how to layer sounds, from Stephen Hague he learnt that if you put time and money into a project you can make it smooth, and Arthur Baker, who produced 'Touched By The Hand Of God' taught him "that you don't have to be good to have a good time. Before, when we worked with him on 'Confusion' he just went totally wild. We had thought he was going to be very precise and technical but he was just enjoying himself. It demystified the whole thing."

Stephen Morris, New Order's drummer, is equally enthusastic about working with a variety of producers.

"They've got something that you've not got. It doesn't have to be a producer, you could get a tramp off the street to do a producer's job, because what it does is give you another way of looking at what you're doing. You get so involved, it's good to have that fifth view. Obviously a tramp wouldn't be so well prepared."

Have any of the producers you've ever worked with behaved like tramps?

"Arthur Baker occasionally, but we won't go into that, ha ha ha. They've got a way of working, you've got a way of working, if you go their way then at the end of the day you come off wiser. They probably do as well because it's all educational. There's always something you can learn. To get stuck into doing the same thing all the time is the worse thing that could happen."

Stephen, and the band's fourth member, keyboardist Gillian Gilbert, in no way take back seats. They might be less obvious socially and visually than Barney and Hook but when it comes to the interview, Stephen, especially, comes right out of himself. He laughs a lot, is hard to shut up, and offers probably the clearest insight into the way New Order work. The idea of tramps producing records stems from the days of his first ever group, The Sunshine Valley Dance Band, who, when they weren't drinking themselves sick on cooking sherry, tried to get winos to sign contracts to produce them.

The only person ever to join New Order, Gillian is just as valuable to listen to. A fan of Joy Division, and already going out with Stephen before being asked to join New Order, Gillian still occasionally refers to the band as 'they'. Her opinions on New Order's appeal are often the most lucid. From the start she always thought of Joy Division as dance music, though as she's keen to point out, few others did. She also believes the reason New Order remain so fresh is because of the variety of musical interests spread throughout the band.

'Barney likes a lot of funky disco records,' she says. "Hooky likes a lot of rocky Sisters of Mercy type of things and I'm sure that sort of variety influences the way we sound."

"It's like the protest singer syndrome," continues Stephen, still analysing why New Order are so original. "If you've got a message to get across and you're whinging on about how terrible life is, people will misunderstand what you mean. If you tell them 'Red is blue' half of them will go, 'Oh yeah, I get it, Red is Green'. But if you can make them feel the same things as you've felt, if you can recreate an emotion and they recognise it, then that says a lot more than a thousand words of preaching."

"The mixture of tastes makes it more interesting. Like 'Love Vigilantes' is a Country & Western song for me," says Gillian.

Why, because of the nature of the story?

"No because we said 'Right let's have a harmonica part', butts in Stephen, "and the harmonica part ended up sounding like 'Grooving With Mr Bloe', which is an old country song. It has a mournful but optimistic feel."

I think 'Touched By The Hand Of God' will probably last a lot longer than 'True Faith'.

"I'm glad you've said that because there's an interesting story, and it will shed light onto the way some things work," says Stephen. "This girl called Beth B decided she was going to make a feature film, which turned out to be Salvation. Through Michael Shamberg, who is Factory US, she asked us if we'd like to write some music for it. We thought, 'Yeah we'll do it'. It was a low budget of two grand, which meant we could only spend a week in a cheap studio, but because it was experience and seemed like a good thing to get into, we decided to do it.

"She turned up with a video of the film and said, 'I want music from here to here, here to here, and here to here. So we were writing to pictures, and after five days we had all these atmospheric instrumentals. On the Friday at 5 o'clock she heard them and said 'Oh, but I really wanted a song’. She was alright about it and we liked her, so we said. A song! You must be f---ing joking! When do you want it for?' And she said she was leaving at seven in the morning.

"So by 7am the next day we had written, recorded, and mixed this whole thing, and that was 18 months ago. But, and this is where the problems started to crop up, the upshot of which was that this song which could have been released at the time of 'True Faith', wasn't, because of thousands and thousands of bullshit reasons. Like 'There are too many syllables in the chorus for it to be a convincing pop song."

"At the time we thought it sounded better than the idea of 'True Faith’," adds Gillian.

'Substance' and 'True Faith' are appropriate titles to New Order. The speed at which young bands are picked up today, and their willingness to be taken so early, will prevent many from ever developing the quality of New Order.

It is the dominance New Order have maintained over the press and their own independence that draws respect of so many bands. As Hook says: "New Order have changed and dallied in different things, and that is a plus point because it means you can stick to your ideals but use commercialism to give you the power to make your independence more important."

The motivation behind the power, the beauty, the success of New Order is their faith, their unwavering belief that they are the most exhilerating and challenging commercial band around. Unfortunately (for every other sucker who currently treads the boards) they are right...

As Stephen says: "It doesn't really matter that somebody else has done something that they consider is better than what you do; it's whether you think it's better than you. If you consider that something else better than you, then why are you bothering to do it in the first place? If you don't believe in yourself then...why?"

New Order's faith is matched by their ability; 'Shellshock', 'Temptation', 'Everything's Gone Green', 'Love Vigilantes', 'Perfect Kiss', 'BLT', 'Blue Monday', 'Angel Dust', 'True Faith'... the list really is endless.

New Order have been touched by the hand of God. They are, as Hook believes, the "success story of punk". Why masturbate cockroaches when you could ride the backs of tiger kings? "Oooops!"